lucid

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #120: Raiders of the Lost Colosseum

I'm an Indiana Jones type of character. I'm in a huge stone chamber, deep underground, sitting on a platform on the arm of some strange metallic device. The device appears to be some kind of scale, with two arms extending to the side, my butt planted firmly on the left arm.

There are square receptacles along each arm and I'm holding a square-shaped block. I'm somehow supposed to fit into the right spot in order to make the scale balance and unearth some kind of treasure.

It occurs to me that I might be dreaming and I quickly decide that I am. I'm fascinated by this device, though, and want to keep playing with it. I try the little square block in a couple of different receptacles, which seems to lower and raise the platform I'm sitting on. After doing this for a bit, I blank out and go into the void. It's pretty sudden, and I lose track of my dream body.

Now I'm seated at my kitchen table, semi-lucid and slightly confused. There's a weird cord hanging down by the back door like something that would go with a set of blinds. I don't recogznize it, and I realize that I'm still dreaming.

I phase through the door into the yard. It looks like my yard, but the sky is orange and the fencing around my pool is missing. There's a strange ripple in the water of my pool, and I walk toward it to investigate. When I'm a few feet away, though, my vision goes black and I wind up in the void.

I'm determined not to lose my dream body this time, so I quickly lick my right hand, then rub my hands together. (Why lick first? Nobody knows.) I poke at my jaw, chest, stomach, and weenie. All are present and accounted for, and I'm satisfied that my dream body is intact.

Now I want to get to the Colosseum. I drop down to one knee and rub my right hand in the ground, expecting to feel Colosseum sand in my fingers. Immediately I do. Now I recall that in the past I had imagined a gladius (ancient Roman sword) in my hand and started swinging it around to transition out of the void. I decide to do this again.

I feel the weight of the sword in my hand as I whirl it around like a crazed chimp. I can hear the noise of a crowd all around me now and my vision's beginning to form. It's still blurry, but I know that I'm heading in the right direction. The momentum seems to give out at some point, though, and I wake up.

Angel Falls!! Finally on the scoreboard for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #119: Angel Falls

Wife and I are driving in a car through a field. Somehow, we believe that we're experiencing her brother's future and what will become of his life. The mood is relaxed and exploratory -- we're journeying with of a sense of curiosity rather than concern or foreboding.

I veer off on a path that goes to the left. "Not that way! The zoo is this way!" Wife grabs the wheel and yanks it back so that we're going straight once more. We follow this dirt path for a while before emerging onto a suburban street.

Somehow we're now pushing a big lawnmower rather than driving a car. The left side of the street is taken up by an angry-looking giant while the right side is littered with "doggy clean-up bags" that are filled with poop. Wife thinks that we should steer toward the poop bags and I think we should head for the giant because the poop will be too gross on the lawnmower wheels. We're not sure what to do, and as I examine the situation, I realize that this has to be a dream.

I'm slightly unclear on what happens from here, but I know that I was lucid for a good while, flew, found our 4-year-old son "E", and lost lucidity. Much later I'm walking through a train station with E when I remember how recently I was dreaming and realize that I still am. "[E]", I say, "I'm dreaming."

"That's a lucid dream!" he responds, and hops a little bit.

"That's right, buddy," I tell him. "Come with me outside. Remember that you can do everything that I can do." (I'm speaking to E, but mostly trying to remind myself.) I'm holding E's hand, and together we start flying toward the exit. A few DCs glance at us as we fly, but most ignore us. For no reason in particular, my flight momentum cuts out, but I focus on the street outside, thinking, We're out there now.

Now we're moving through the air again. I hear a DC shout "No!" and a hand grabs my ankle. For a moment this slows us down, but I think Bullshit, we're flying just fine... and right away we're moving perfectly again.

We land outside on a peaceful street scene. It's cobblestoned with no cars, just pedestrians. A river runs through the center of the road, running past the obelisk of a town square on our right, flowing toward a bay that's on our left. We follow the river, which grows broader and flows under a bridge before ultimately joining the bay. I decide that this river is perfect. This is the place where Angel Falls will be.

I turn back toward the distant town square and shout to the crowd: "This is Angel Falls! It's right here at the end of this river." And I unironically add, "Watch meee!"

From behind me I hear the thundering of a massive waterfall. Now when I look back toward the bay, everything looks strange. The original river is standing still, almost like time has stopped. But now there's a second, wilder river running right beside it. The bay has dropped completely out of sight, like we're at the top of a mesa. E and I fly over the calm river toward this new river and I can see it -- the top of an enormous waterfall! This is it!



I land close to the waterfall, realize that I'm no longer holding E's hand, and look for him. I want him to come with me, but I won't wait long. I'm too desperate to complete this task! Fortunately he's just behind me. "[E], hurry!" I tell him. "We're going over this waterfall!" He doesn't hesitate, scurrying up to the waterfall and leaping off in a clumsy-looking froggy posture. I plunge over the side, just behind him.

I'm freefalling now, soaked and yelling with excitement. I'm speeding toward a vast, green valley below me. I make no attempt to control my descent, move, or do anything apart from enjoy the sensation of falling through this curtain of water.

Suddenly I hit a pool of water below and instantly enter the void. I can still feel water all around me and for a moment I think about trying to reemerge. But no -- I did what I wanted to do. Time to wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #118: Water Slide

I'm walking down the central aisle of an airplane when I hear a voice to my right: "Hey [CanisLucidus]! Check out this view!" I look to my right and NewArtemis is waving me over and pointing at the window. "Have you ever seen Los Angeles from the air before?"

"[NewArtemis]!" I take the middle seat and say something about the last time I flew into LA. I talk about how it's been a long time since I was there and ask her what she's doing in LA.

"Same thing you are," she says. "The gymnastics conference." I feel like this is totally unexpected and don't know how to respond. Why don't I remember this? Since when do I care about gymnastics? Art points out the window again. "Look, that's the Staples Center!"

As I'm checking out LA through the window, a flight attendant makes an announcement that the plane will be landing shortly. Art stares at me pointedly, not saying anything. "Am I supposed to be doing something?" I ask, not following what's going on.

"Are you just going to leave your son all by himself while the plane lands?" Now I'm sure that my 2-year-old son "R" is all by himself several rows back. Panicked, I run toward the back of the plane without saying goodbye. When I get back to my row, I see some guy in the window seat and R crawling around freely on the middle seat. The guy turns to me and says something odd, and I wonder whether this is all a dream. As soon as I ask myself the question, I know the answer.

I look out the window again, and the plane is on the ground now. Passengers are starting to stand up at their seats and in the aisle. I stand up in the aisle myself and say, "[NewArtemis], come back this way. I'm going to Angel Falls." Almost immediately she slips past some guy standing in the aisle and appears near my row. I start narrating partly to her but mostly to the dream itself. "Okay, this plane took us right to Angel Falls." We walk through the doorway of the airplane and down a short set of stairs covered by a canopy.

"Can you fly?" I ask her. But I correct myself: "You can fly." And she floats past, bouncing along the canopy ceiling before reaching the end and floating up temporarily out of sight. Now I hear the roar of a waterfall and I'm feeling really excited. I start flying, too, and I wind up bouncing along just like she did before I break out into the open.

The waterfall is there, but it's really just a waterpark slide sitting on an open stretch of runway. The ride's about 30 feet tall, quite steep, and looks like fun. It's got a banner stretched over its exit with its name... something like, "_____ Raging River _____", with a couple of words I can't recall. Art and I fly over to the top of the slide, me just slightly in front. It's 4 "lanes" of slides right next to each other, and I take the 2nd from the left. I think that Art wound up further behind me in the same lane. I reach the bottom, zooming past a couple of portly kids in lanes #1 and #3.

As soon as I hit the bottom of the slide, I hop up again, expecting Angel Falls to be in front of me. And indeed, in front of me is the top of a huge waterfall. This one's got a banner stretched over the top of it, too: "Angel Falls". But it's still some kind of ride, not the real waterfall. It's close. A very impressive, realistic (almost scary) ride, but still a ride. I shout something back to Art about how this probably doesn't count. She says something I can't remember and indicates she's still here.

The dream still feels really stable and vivid, but I'm reluctant to waste any time, so I leap over the waterfall feet-first. Immediately I'm drenched and in freefall. After a few seconds of that, I land smoothly on some kind of big, steep plastic slide and travel along it for maybe another 20 seconds before things flatten out just a bit and the slide takes me underground. I'm still moving at a good pace but no longer at the crazy speeds of before.

The slide flattens out and broadens, and I slide past a few other riders that I'm sharing the slide with. When I feel myself slowing down, I find that I can sort of spin on my butt and gain a little speed. One DC that I pass asks me how I'm doing this and I tell him that I'm having a lucid dream.

After a while, the slide narrows and finally ends. There's a long line of DCs waiting to exit the "ride". I think about whether I should wait in line, then remember that I need to still find the real Angel Falls. I'm thinking about how to do this when the dream ends.

This one was a lot of fun, in large part because it was the first time I managed to really modify terrain in a major way. I still can't believe that I fell for the last false awakening, especially after catching the others.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #117: Carving the Coasts

I'm standing on a bus, blathering some false memory to the other riders about how a friend of mine was on an episode of Friends. I suddenly realize that I've missed my stop by miles, we're in the final bus terminal, and everybody's getting off. A middle-aged bald guy hands me a bunch of coins, including a JFK half dollar and a weird coin with a hole in the middle of it, and announces that he's paying everyone's bus fare. I hand the coins over to the bus driver, who takes them all. Once we're outside, the bald guy asks for his change and then berates me when I say that I gave the driver everything.

I feel like an idiot and everyone's staring at me, so I slink away and walk outside, wondering how I'm going to get home. On the corner I see a gang member carrying a pistol and wearing a blue bandana face mask. He jumps out from behind cover and starts firing at some unknown enemy. I think that this must be a really bad neighborhood and that I'd better get out of here. I look up at the sun to figure out which way is east, but notice that the sun's too low in the sky for the brightness of the day. The sun self-consciously moves higher in the sky to match my expectations and I realize that I'm dreaming.

I'm walking by an apartment complex with a little playground filled with grade school kids. I start flying to look for Angel Falls and one of the kids says, "It's Superman!"

"That's right!" I say, and start "bah bah baahhh"ing the original John Williams Superman theme. I decide that I want to hear the real thing and immediately my subconscious produces the original soundtrack (or close enough to convince me, at least.) I fly off, the Superman score playing in my head and filling me with nerdy confidence.

I come to a broad river with some low hills along the water's edge. I fly along the river until I come to a coastline, proceeding along that for a while, looking for Angel Falls. I start eyeing those low hills and think about whether I could turn them into Angel Falls. As I do this, they start growing taller, and I find that I can raise and lower the height of these hills just by thinking about it. Something seems to stop them from getting up to full mountain height, but I can still get them high enough to impress myself, at least. I keep flying along the coast, building the hills taller and watching as the occasional small waterfall even erupts from the side. These waterfalls are all pretty modest, though, and not nearly high enough for Angel Falls.

As I'm happily traveling down the coast and raising the hills up to the sky, a group of elderly people that look like tourists start flying in front of me, way too close, and blocking my view a bit. The tourists are pointing at the hills and reading some kind of guide book, and disturbingly, one of them is only wearing a diaper. I maneuver past a couple of them, but the old man in a diaper won't get out of the way. I say, "You want to land," and he immediately banks to the left and drops out of sight. Satisfied, I continue flying and trying to make the coastal hills climb higher and higher. I can't get enough of watching this! As I'm raising one set of hills really high, I start to see water cascading off of it, and I think that it's going to turn into Angel Falls. As I look up and up, my perspective suddenly clonks onto its side and I'm pitched into the void.

I rub my hands together to make sure my dream body's ready to go, then I try to find the floor. I imagine my hands rubbing against the smooth rock of a river bed, but the sensation I feel is different. More like cloth. Soon I can see out of my left eye, but only in a small circle. Right eye's still blind. It looks like I'm laying facedown on our comforter -- false awakening. It's morning and I'm alone, laying across the bed.

I get up and check myself in the bedroom mirror. I've got a bunch of blankets and sheets and stuff wrapped around me. I put my arms out so they can fall to the floor. I look just like myself except that my eyes are filled in with black and these dark wisps of smoky electricity-looking stuff are crackling around my head. Overall effect: badass. There's still something wrong with my right eye, but I just tell myself that the blankets are gone and I can see fine. Pretty soon, I do.

There's a new door in the wall of our bedroom, and I walk through it into some kind of sunroom. (This is strange since our bedroom is on the 2nd floor.) My friends "Leroy" and "Leroyette" (husband and wife) are here working on some kind of art project with a bunch of strangers. Everyone's working away with scissors, paper, and cloth. I call out, "[Leroy]! I'm having a lucid dream."

"Here, let me get the door," he says, undoing a bunch of strange locks on an external, glass-paned door. I step outside and there's a small waterfall, about 15 feet high, going in a small garden. I'm wondering how to turn this into Angel Falls when the scene goes dark right before...

I have another false awakening in my master bedroom. The door to the sunroom is still there, and I head through it again. There, again, is Leroy. This time I try undoing all of the locks myself. There are an unbelievable number of curtains, locks, and shutters covering the door, and I'm finding it really frustrating to mess with them. "I don't recall your doors being covered with this much bullcrap," I whine. Leroy chuckles and tries to help me. (Apparently I thought this was his house, but it doesn't resemble any room in Leroy's home.) "You know, I could have just phased this whole time. Sorry, man!" I phase through the door onto a grassy lawn, jump into the air, and start flying again. After flying for a short time...

Another false awakening, this time in the sunroom. Embarrassingly, this one fools me and I'm non-lucid. An overweight bearded guy in his 20s is dressed in a wookiee costume (sans head.) He's complaining about how girls are always too interested in lucid dreaming. Don't they understand that stuff is just fantasy? He puts the head of the wookiee costume on and poses for a photograph, doing his best Chewbacca cry. Cameras flash. The dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #116: Dive Bomber in Darkness

I'm walking out of the lobby of a hospital, some important errand on my mind. When I head through the bank of automatic doors into the night, I'm confronted by a huge crowd of reporters and spectators that are hanging around like something important is about to happen. Is this a dream? Yes.

Looking into the crowd, I see my high school physics teacher, "Mrs. C". I walk up to her. "[Mrs. C]! I know that you've been waiting, like, forever for me to go on Draw Something. Sorry about that. How have you been doing?"

"Oh, that's all right!" she says. "My wife and I have been doing great." This is strange -- Mrs. C has a husband, not a wife. He even came by the school a couple of times.

"Well it was good talking to you," I say, and I step back from the crowd a bit, thinking about my next move. I remember wanting to go to Angel Falls so I decide that'll be my goal for this dream.

But just as I'm making my plans, I notice that one of the reporters standing nearby is extremely attractive. She's about 30, probably half-Asian, and lightly freckled. I start thinking very sexy thoughts before catching myself -- if I approach her, I know for sure that the dream will only head one way (and not to Angel Falls.) I back quickly away, my mind still going sexytime. The reporter stops speaking into her microphone, looks directly at me and says, "I think I love you."

I put out my hands and kind of wave them around. "No! No, you don't! I'm sorry, that was my fault!" Immediately she returns to what she was doing, forgetting all about me.

Okay, Angel Falls. I scan the horizon but there's nothing to really use. I could just start flying and try to work from there... As I'm planning, I start thinking about the good-looking reporter again. Okay, I really need to get out of here...

I allow myself just a moment to imagine that the top of Angel Falls is right behind me. Then I fling myself backwards as if I'm jumping off of a cliff, imagining myself going over the falls. There's a weird moment where I'm stuck upside down, my head sort of embedded in the sidewalk. After a couple of awkward seconds like this, I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together, then imagine that I'm falling along the falls. Almost immediately I feel the spray of water against my face and arms. I point myself facefirst at the ground, arms tight to my sides. Air rushes past my skin as I gather speed. I feel myself going faster and faster, air filling my mouth. I keep "falling" like this for at least 30 seconds, and the sensation is so awesome that I don't even mind not having visuals.

I feel amused that "Angel Falls" is so incredibly high that I can skydive like this from it. I wonder how long this can go on. Even though I'm enjoying myself immensely falling through the darkness like this, I know that I need visuals to complete the task. I try to focus on what this should all look like but the intensity of the rest of the experience has me a bit distracted. The dream ends before I can make it all come together.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #115: Sandwiches for Skeptics

I DEILDed during this dream and wound up really scrambling the beginning. Pity. Anyway, I think this was a DILD. I remember something about a prison, finding my way through an office building, and being attacked. Somewhere along the way, I find Wife and my oldest son E. My memory becomes very clear here: It's morning and I'm walking through an empty, gray city with Wife and our oldest son E. I hold E's hand as he bounces and scampers beside me, pointing and jabbering excitedly.

We pass under a bridge and walk up a sloped street. All around us are gray vacant lots, brownstone tenements, and the occasional piece of newspaper carried on the wind. The one swatch of color is a bus stop to our left that bears a beautiful ad for Arby's. Below the Arby's logo it reads, "Sandwiches for Skeptics".

I find this very amusing but also really unlikely to be the new Arby's slogan. I tell Wife that "I'll have to google that later" but she doesn't respond. I run my fingers over the sign, appreciating its detail. There are even some air bubbles underneath the paper as if it wasn't pasted down all that carefully. I take my time with this, thinking that it can only help to draw me into the dream.

Task of the Year occurs to me. I'm fired up about going to Angel Falls, and I imagine that it's out there, just past the vacant lot and a row of buildings. As I do, I see little sprays of water coming up from over the tops of the buildings. I'm amused that the "graphics" for this water are absolutely terrible. The little puffs of water look like repeated, low-resolution particle effects with no animation.

Okay, enough thinking. Time to fly. I consider summoning NewArtemis to join us but then remember that I need to stay focused -- I'm already trying to bring two DCs with me. A summoning is pushing my luck too much. I take to the air, still holding E's hand, and his reaction is surprisingly subdued. From the ground below, I hear Wife say, "Oh okay... bye, guys!"

"Just follow us!" I shout back to her.

There's no reply, though, so I focus on flight. Looks like it's just me and E now. As we fly high enough to look over the tops of the surrounding buildings, I see that the entire city rest atop a huge mesa that rises high above an ocean. At the edge of the mesa I see a waterfall -- Angel Falls!

The Falls are a long way off, so I focus on flying faster and faster. We get up some good speed, but the dream is starting to feel thin and insubstantial. All I can think to do is speed up, but I'm not fast enough. We're still about a quarter mile away from the falls when I feel the sensation (real or imagined) of my eyeballs moving around and I'm awake.

I relax and go for a DEILD. I quickly enter a new dream scene, flying again, but this time as an observer with no dream body. I'm on a long, spiraling slope built out of stone blocks. The sides are unwalled and I can see that this tower stretches far above the clouds. I slide smoothly upward along the slope, making at least 3 full revolutions. I'm aware that I'm dreaming but I make no attempt to exert control. I'm content to just know where the tower leads. I keep spiraling upward and either lose lucidity or slip into the darkness between dreams...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #114: The Vampire Apocalypse

Wife has opened a restaurant and somehow all of the recipes have been lost. She and I are in some place that looks like a choir room, desperately searching through a pile of hundreds of envelopes for the one that contains them. Suddenly I become lucid, but it's a very low level of lucidity. I grasp that I'm dreaming and I understand that this gives me awesome powers, but I have no idea that I could just ignore this whole recipe thing.

I point at the pile of envelopes, willing the recipes to emerge. One of the envelopes floats a couple of feet in the air and opens, freeing a few sheets of paper that I know have the recipes on them. I grab them out of the air and hand them to Wife. She starts talking excitedly and waving her hands in these grand gestures, but I soon wake up.

I hold still for DEILD, but after a brief wait emerge non-lucid sitting in a small, boxy room that's shaped vaguely like a confessional booth. My friend "Dragon" and I are laughing and swapping stories of all the stupid stuff we did when we were kids. From outside my friend "RF" knocks on the booth and then sort of phases or melts through the wall. I realize that this has to be a dream but immediately wake up.

Back down for DEILD, again winding up in a non-lucid, this time in the hallway of my childhood home. Our neighbor "Mr. G" from when I was a kid is wandering around in our backyard, holding a bag of lawn clippings. I know that he's helping me try to find a 4-leaf clover in this bag of clippings. He becomes angry that I'm not helping and starts throwing the lawn clippings everywhere. I suddenly remember trying to DEILD and become lucid again. There's a door at the back of the house that's not usually there and I walk toward it, preparing to phase. The door swings open just as I approach, though, and again, the dream ends.

I look for another DEILD and again come up non-lucid. I'm at home with Wife now and she's telling me a story of how someone was attacked by a vampire downtown today. We worry about what this means and whether she's safe going to work.

Time advances, and now it's early morning. The sun's just coming up and I'm at the back door, looking out over our back yard toward the horizon. I see a swarm of bats approaching and I know that overnight vampirism has become a plague that's spread throughout the world. I tell Wife that we have to hide, and we run upstairs to the bedroom to bunker ourselves in.

Once upstairs I peer out of a tiny window to the street below. About a dozen vampires are congregating on the street with a handful of human prisoners. The leader of the vampires, blonde and dressed completely in black, shouts bizarre warnings and threats to those of us holed up in our homes. He kicks one of the prisoners, a middle-aged man, to the ground, sprays him with liquid from some kind of squeeze bottle, and lights him on fire.

I duck down from the window, shaken and frightened. "They're killing everyone," I say to Wife. "Is this like what happens in The Passage? I haven't read that far yet." (The Passage is a book that I'm slowly reading.)

Wife nods. "It's exactly the same."

"Okay," I say. "What did they do? How do we fight these things?"

She shakes her head gravely. "I can't give spoilers."

I think this makes complete sense. "You're right. Maybe if we shoot them in the head...?" I now have the AR-15 in my hands.

"That won't work," she says. Then from out of nowhere, she very graphically and directly demands that we have sex. This is so completely out of character (particularly in a vampire apocalypse) that I realize it's all a dream.

"Don't worry," I say. "It's just a dream." I kiss her for a moment. In spite of her earlier insistences, the mood is completely non-sexual. I stand up, thinking about phasing outside.

"What are you doing?" she says. "Stay down!"

"This is a dream. There's nothing to worry about." But I can see that she doesn't believe me. I know that she's just a DC, but at this point I'm really attached. I decide that I'll just carry her out of this scene, change locations, and hopefully this nasty dream plot will die off. I kneel down to scoop her up as the dream fades...

Finally broke that dry spell! This was a really fun one. Emotions got the best of me at the end, but it was great while it lasted.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #113: Woodrow the Giant

I'm in a first-person shooter video game where I'm entering an airport. One of the people I'm with slips some kind of blaster into my pocket as we're walking through airport security. Won't that set off the metal detectors? I think of all this as just a game, though, so I give it a try.

An alarm sounds, surprisingly soft but unmistakable. I keep walking, just in case they think it was someone else behind me. As I head into a broad, bustling concourse, I see a few security guys heading toward me from different directions. They're dressed in plain clothes, which makes them seem less official and more menacing. I change directions and they change with me. I know I'm caught. One guy has his hand on his right hip like he's ready to pull a gun, so I decide to be first. I pull the banana-shaped blaster out of my jacket pocket and start shooting. My first shot catches the guy right in the chest and he crumples to the floor.

I immediately realize that this isn't a video game, but a dream. I remember goals: meet Art at the Alamo and Tasks of the Month. Since this is already a video game scenario, I think that it'll be easy to pull Art in. "[NewArtemis], I know you're right there behind me." No response. By now the other security guys have drawn their guns, although they oddly have not fired yet.

I shoot one more of them and he collapses to the ground. Still, nobody returns fire. "[NewArtemis], a little help!" A woman walking nearby turns around. She's wearing jeans and has dirty blonde hair, not at all the usual hair color for Art's DC, but it's definitely her!

"Hey there!" I say, thinking that it'll be fun to have her take care of the last of these security guys. But when I look for them, they're gone -- everyone is walking through the airport concourse like nothing has happened. I turn back to Art. "You dyed your hair...?" I half-comment, half-ask. (I sincerely doubt this.)

"Hey," she says, with a wry half-smile, ignoring the whole hair thing.

We hug and I say, "Okay, that's Basic. You feel like punching Woodrow Wilson?" (Advanced Task of the Month.)

She nods. "I'd love to punch that guy." (We have never discussed Woodrow Wilson, so I'm likely projecting here.)

I glance around for Wilson. "Let's do it," I say to Art, and then call out to the crowd: "Woodrow Wilson! I know you're here!" We walk along the concourse for perhaps twenty feet when I spot a huge man to our left. Somehow, even with everything around him brightly lit, he's hidden in shadow. The man is at least ten feet tall, probably closer to twelve, and he's flanked by two normal-sized men who don't look like they're doing anything in particular.

"Is that you, Woodrow Wilson?" As soon as I say this, the man's face is illuminated and it's definitely Wilson -- long, expressionless face, glasses, the whole bit. Weirdly, he's dressed in the style of a Catholic priest with a cassock and clerical collar. He strides toward us quickly and moves up very close to crowd me.

Wilson doesn't attack but just stands there towering over me, no expression on his face, his eyes unfocused. I've lost some emotional control and I'm starting to feel fearful. Art circles around on my right, grimacing a little, her hands balled into fists. She can help me, but I know that for Task I know that I need to hit the guy. I try to calm myself down while imagining myself leaping up and doing some kind of superman punch. I'm freaking out a little bit, though, and the dream falls apart.

This is probably the first time that I've done high speed flight since I flew into space so long ago. Very exciting to experience!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #112: Water Pressure

It's the middle of the night and I'm walking around the front yard of my childhood home. The sprinklers are all on and it's my job to somehow turn each sprinkler head off by touching it. As I do this, I'm narrating out loud to one of my waking life friends what I'm doing. (Can't remember which friend this was, since they were "off camera".)

"These big sprayers at the front of the yard are the worst ones!" I explain to my friend. As I approach the sprinkler head, it hits me with a powerful jet of water that starts pushing me away from the yard and out into the street. "See what I mean!" I shout as the jet continues to shove me.

Pretty soon I'm tumbling and sliding all the way down the street, trying to fight my way back to the yard. Okay, this has got to be a dream... The spray continues to hit me, pushing me along faster and faster as I slide down the street. Somehow it's not getting me soaked but it is pushing me at an incredible rate of speed. I'm sliding past houses like I'm on a bobsled attached to a rocket.

I leap into the air and start flying, still going really, really fast. The speed is absolutely dizzying, easily ten or more times faster than any lucid flying I've ever done. I soon leave civilization behind and I'm flying at super speed over grassland and hills. The sun is now up and early morning light is illuminating the landscape. My flight control isn't perfect and I do a couple of unintentional barrel rolls, fly higher than I mean to, then lower than I'd like.

Just as I'm flying over the top of another set of hills, I find myself in the void, suddenly moving much more slowly. Except it's not a complete void. I see a distant dream scene in front of me, almost like something I'm watching on television through a long, dark tunnel. I'm moving toward this new scene, rubbing my hands together and preparing to enter it.

It's a scene from some sort of grand luxury hotel, bright and really classic-looking. The men look sharp but indistinguishable from one another and the women are dressed in crazy feather- and sequin-clad dresses like something from the Roaring 20s. I'm now a part of the scene, standing in this hotel lobby, looking up as these amazing DCs pass by on the balconies above. I try to remember what I'd intended to do next, but the dream ends.

Narcissism and botched summonings ahead. Still, every lucid's fun and this was a good reminder not to be too casual with details in dream control situations!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #111: Vanity at The Doppelganger Waterpark

I have a false awakening. Faint morning light filters in through the window. I wonder whether it's too bright to get back to sleep. A bedside clock says that it's 5:00 AM. It seems too bright and too late to have a lucid dream. I remember the micro-lucid from earlier in the morning and feel disappointed that I didn't hit a real one. (I really did have a micro-lucid earlier, as well as an earlier false awakening.)

I get up to use the restroom and notice that I'm not in my usual bedroom but rather on the first floor of a building -- a hotel perhaps? I feel like I'm awake, but the bathroom is just... so different. I'm dreaming.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear Wife beginning to stir. She's muttering something but I can't make it out. The morning light makes it seem urgent to get started with my goals, so I phase out through an external wall, my head and shoulders passing through a window. I end up in a fenced, grassy yard with a circular stone table surrounded by simple stone benches.

My strategy for this dream is to forget the meeting location for now and just try to summon NewArtemis directly. I walk toward the yard's open gate, holding my hand behind me as I go. "[NewArtemis], grab onto my hand." No good. I have the sense that I did it all wrong. Stop asking. I sort of try again but my level of intent is poor and nothing happens.

As I exit the yard, I'm distracted from the summon by a mirror hanging on a brick wall to my left. I check my reflection and see that I'm wearing a pair of jeans without a shirt. I vainly check myself out and notice that I'm less in shape than I remember being -- torso a little smoother, face a little puffier. I start worrying that I've let myself slip in waking life and try to remember whether that's true. It suddenly occurs to me that this is probably the most pathetic, narcissistic thing I've ever wasted lucid dream time on in my entire life.

I walk further along the grass until I come to a large, packed pool that's being rocked by gentle waves, almost like it's a half-activated water park wave pool. I notice my friend "SC" playing with a young child (too young to be one of his sons). About twelve feet to his right, I see another SC! The doppelganger smiles and gives me a nod of acknowledgment.

As I continue along the pool, I see my high school friend "LM". And just as with the other friend, not far from her is another doppelganger. Again, the doppelganger looks my way and smiles. The smile seems genuine rather than threatening so even though I find it a little weird, I'm not too troubled by anything that I'm seeing.

The water makes me think of Angel Falls. Okay, new plan: summon Art while on the move and dash to Angel Falls for Task of the Year. My hope is that if I'm very casual about the summon it'll just work. I reach my hand behind me and say, "[NewArtemis], Angel Falls is just up ahead." I feel a hand grasp mine and I look back to confirm that it's Art. But when I do, I see that the hand is sticking straight up out of the water. The geometry of all this strikes me as strange. How is their arm so long that they can still be submerged and grab onto me?

As I'm thinking this, the person floats up out of the water, still gripping my hand. She's a complete stranger -- blonde, early 20s, fair-skinned, slightly heavier build. She's wearing a black one-piece swimsuit. "Who are you?" I ask, and her only reply is to half-smile and turn away. I notice that her teeth have a very mild yellow/brownish stain to them.

"I'm going to change you into [NewArtemis]. Okay?" I'm not trying to ask permission so much as... explain what's about to happen? There's no reply. I look off to the side to make the transformation easier, but the dream ends before I can take this any further.

This was the fifth of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #110: The Substitute

I'm walking through a mall when I pass my friend "JR". Walking a bit further along, I pass by a yogurt place. Manning the counter is another person who looks almost exactly like JR. I think about how odd this is and after a moment's contemplationg, realize that this is a dream.

My prospective memory is fully engaged and I immediately remember that I'm trying to meet up with Art. This time I don't even bother getting to the Alamo. I keep walking through the mall, extending my hand behind me, and say, "[NewArtemis], I know you're already here. Grab my hand when you're ready to go." Immediately, I see a female-looking shadow appear on the floor walking next to my shadow. Soon after that, there's a grip on my hand. Confident that the summon has worked, I turn to look and find myself shaking hands with...

...a complete stranger! She's in her mid-20s, black, short, and very friendly-looking. "Uh, how's it going?" I say.

"Hey! I'm [NewArtemis' first name] Campbell!"

"Ah, nice to meet you," I say. "I was actually calling up a friend of mine." I pause. "Are you the [NewArtemis] that I know, just with a different look? Are you Art?"

"No," she says. "I'm sorry! You must be so disappointed."

"Nah, it's all good. You seem cool. You want to hit Angel Falls with me? I can do Task of the Year there."

Ms. Campbell agrees and as we approach the mall's exit, I realize that it's kind of weird that I'm still gripping her hand in a handshake (or has it turned into a hand-hold??) I turn to look at her but as I pass my gaze through the sunlight that's pouring in through the nearby glass door, she seems to vanish from the scene. This leaves me a little confused, so I pause for a moment, looking around the nearby area of the mall and wondering what I'll do next.

As I'm looking, I see my friend "Fry-guy" loitering near a set of stairs. I go up to talk to him and I'm astonished when he greets me with a British accent. (Fry-guy is from middle America.) He starts speaking exuberantly about a history book that I lent him named Idiots that's all about the litany of crucial mistakes made by various idiots that have set civilization on a bad course. (There's no such book, as far as I know.) After that, I explain to him that I'm having a lucid dreaming, and we have a quick discussion about that next.

Strangely, there's some classroom nearby taking a test, and a couple of the pupils keep stage-whispering to us to be quiet. I walk with him away from the class back toward the mall exit, continuing to talk lucid dreaming until the dream ends.

This was the fourth of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #109: Metroid

When I complete this WILD, the dream imagery forms into a video game screen. I'm controlling a video game like Metroid where me (or my avatar) can leap, shoot, or curl up into a ball and roll.



I'm fighting my way through some alien mountain range where I'm engaged in battle with some slug-looking creature with a whip-like tail that can cause avalanches to come crashing down. I fire and fire at the slug, and it flashes colors every time I hit it, just like I'd expect it to in a video game. After doing enough damage, the slug whips its tail into the side of the mountain and a wall of snow comes roaring down the mountain toward me. I instinctively know to curl up into a ball and slide down for a ways in order to avoid it.

After this happens a few times, it starts to feel hopeless. I don't want to spend all of my time fighting this thing, so I flee by hopping to the next mountain over. I know that normally this isn't something that the "game" would allow but I give myself enough semi-flying extra buoyancy that I easily make it over.

The slug doesn't follow me and this next mountain over is quiet and peaceful. I run along the snowy mountainside for a while, enjoying the view of the purple alien sky. After some time, I come to a segment of snow that crumbles away, revealing the mouth of a cave. As I step into the cave, I feel myself waking up, but amazingly the dream hangs in there. I'm now very aware of my physical body in waking life, but the dream is still playing, so I roll with it.

The cave is filled with green-hued stalagmites and stalactites that give off a glow that's strong enough to dimly illuminate the cavern. I walk further into the cavern, just enjoying what I'm seeing since it feels like the dream is on borrowed time. Eventually the scene gives out and I'm awake.

This was the third of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #108: The Torrent

I'm watching one of the Star Wars films with some friends. We're sitting on the floor of some strange classroom and even though I hate to miss any of the movie, I have to pee so badly that I can't wait. I get up and enter some public restroom, approach the urinal, and start going.

While I'm doing this, some guy comes in to use one of the stalls. The bathroom has this horrible design where there's a mirror on the wall which is angled so that I can see straight into the stall. The guy sits down on the toilet and commences his business without bothering to close the door. It's an awful sight. "Shut the door!" I wail. He obediently slams the door shut.

Meanwhile, I keep peeing and peeing. The guy in the stall finally finishes his business, washes his hands, and leaves... yet I'm still going. Something's not right about this, and I realize that this is a dream. I still need to pee just as badly as when I first arrived, and there seems to be no stopping things. I'm vaguely worried that I'm wetting the bed but I figure that whatever is happening to my waking body, the die has been cast. Time to get out and enjoy this LD.

I step away from the urinal, still peeing all over the place, and exit the restroom. I emerge in a huge store that looks like a Walmart. I survey my surroundings, and every time I look in a direction, I start peeing all over the floor that's in my field of view. Most of the DCs in the store ignore this, but a few run away. Fortunately, after a few seconds, the urine seems to just disappear.

There's a huge mirror covering one wall next to a crudely-constructed wooden stage. I check how I look -- exactly like myself, except I'm pissing all over the place. I find the actual sight of myself doing this totally revolting and devote some dream control effort to making it stop. Soon it does, and all is forgiven (or forgotten.)

I hit a quick double-biceps pose in the mirror, and it occurs to me that the Advanced Task of the Month is to get naked in front of a crowd. I leap onto the stage and all of the DCs in the store turn to look at what I'm up to. I grab my shirt by the back of the collar with both hands and rip the shirt off of my body. It looks like I'm just in jeans and socks now. (No idea where my shoes went -- did I go into the men's room in just socks? Gross!) With one quick downward move, I simultaneously pants myself and pull off the socks, now stark naked.

I feel strangely relaxed and confident about all of this and throw in a few little stripper-style dance moves. Scanning the crowd, I notice that every audience member is now female. I'm not sure whether that's strictly a trick of the menthol or just something that somehow makes me feel more comfortable but I take note of it. With the task satisfied, I jump off the stage, imagining myself clothed once again.

I can't remember what else I'd wanted to do so I have a bit of fun wrecking displays in the store -- I force-push some chairs into a shelf of goods, levitate a bunch of stuff in the air, and generally act like a bad kid. As I'm looking around for my next bit of mischief, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. She's wearing a close-fitting, dark blue dress. Menthol? I think.

"Hi," she says. "What were you hoping I was going to say to you?"

The truth: "I was sort of hoping that you were looking for sex." In spite of myself, I feel pretty embarrassed when I say this.

"There's an honest answer! But don't you think that you ought to get to know me first? Here, sit down," she says, gesturing at a long row of wooden chairs. "I'm Gina."

I sit down with her and she pulls out a notebook that looks exactly like my written dream journal. "What's that notebook?" I ask.

"Dream journal!" she answers cheerfully. "You've got to write everything down if you want to remember it."

She looks like she's about to ask me something when a guy sits down in the chair next to her. He's a black guy, about 30, a touch pudgy. Gina leans back to let him speak, looking a little impatient. This new guy speaks to me in a lecturing tone, saying, "Do you think you can just close every door that you open?" I'm confused by what he's saying and as I'm preparing to ask him what he means, I wake up.

This was the second of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #107: Menthol and Marriage, the Sequel

I'm helping my friend "Leroy" and his wife prepare for a huge party. For reasons unknown, Leroy sticks an ice cream cake in a heated oven, and it melts to a puddle in seconds. "No, man, don't do that!" I say, too late to be of any help.

Leroy gives me a pathetic look and asks, "Do you think it can be fixed?" Solemnly, I shake my head no.

I then have a false awakening on the floor of my master bedroom. The lights are all on and Wife has spread circuit boards and other electronic gizmos all over my side of the bed. "What's all this stuff?" I ask. "How am I supposed to get back to sleep?"

She ignores my second question. "Did you know that [son E] had all of this stuff in his room? I don't even know what he was building but I've got to figure out what it's supposed to be."

I'm super tired and very annoyed that this project is going on. "Can't we figure this out tomorrow? I'm trying to get some sleep. It's..." I look at the clock. "12:30." Wait, my WBTB was at like 3 in the morning... I realize that I'm dreaming. "Sorry, you're right. Keep looking into it. I'm going to look around outside." With that said, I phase through the external wall. I don't emerge in any particular dream scene, though, and fall immediately into the void.

I rub my hands together and probe my dream body, trying to device what exit I'm going to use. I decide that I'll call NewArtemis to pull me out and wind up at the Alamo (or wherever she happens to be.) I extend my hand, calling out twice, but there's no immediate response. This isn't alarming since it's normal for this stuff to take some time. I'm getting ready to "expect" a hand to reach out to pull me through, but before it happens...

... I have a false awakening back in my bed. It's dark now. It's an excellent replica of waking life, but somehow I'm not fooled. I look over at Wife's side of the bed and she's there, fast asleep. It's tough to discern detail in the dark, but it's obvious that she's scantily clad. Things proceed in a fairly predictable fashion and we have a couple of very fun but very private minutes of dream sex before...

... I have a false awakening back in bed. I wrongly believe that I've woken up for real. Wife rolls over to my side of the bed and hits me with a make-out style kiss. I think how cool it is that "waking life" is imitating the dream. She stops for a moment and says, "You're not kissing me the way you usually do. It feels different."

"I was just dreaming. Maybe that's what it is."

"Oh, right," she says. "This is a dream. That's what's different." She kisses me again. I find myself hoping that this is some sort of Groundhog Day scenario. Unfortunately, I wake up soon after, this time for real.

This was the first of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning. It was a crazy night!

I've got until the kids wake up from their nap to get these all journaled. Go Canis go!!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #106: The Terminator Locker

I WILD into a long, empty gym locker room. I'm unsure whether I'm in the locker room or an observer. I sense the presence of my friend "Conan" but I don't see him.

Conan says, "What's it like to have a lucid dream? Is it like in Limitless?"

"No. Not like that. He was smart in that movie. In a lucid dream, I'm stupider than when I'm awake but I can do really cool stuff. It's more like Inception or The Matrix."

"Really?" he says. "I want to be like the guy in Limitless. But I guess it's better to be in The Matrix if Terminators came crawling out of those gym lockers."

The moment that he says this, a skinless T-800 smashes through one of the gym lockers on the opposite wall and starts running toward me. (Us?) Almost immediately, time slows down, the color in the scene shifting slightly toward yellow and a faint heartbeat sound playing in the background like in Max Payne. I want to be armed, and right away there's a Dirty Harry-style .44 magnum revolver in my hand.



I fire once, blowing a hole the size of a silver dollar in the T-800's forehead. As it crashes to the ground, three more Terminators break through the wall of lockers. Time slows further. I fire three more times, and this time I can actually see the bullets fly through the air. As the three T-800s fall, I wind up in the void.

I expect to transition into a new scene, so I plan to reach my hand out for help. I still feel the revolver in my hand, so I toss it away. But the moment that I do, I feel my real hand jerk and I'm awake.